From Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening we read this devotion from June 25.

“The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot.” Genesis 8:9

Reader, can you find rest apart from the ark, Christ Jesus? Then be assured that your religion is vain. Are you satisfied with anything short of a conscious knowledge of your union and interest in Christ? Then woe unto you. If you profess to be a Christian, yet find full satisfaction in worldly pleasures and pursuits, your profession is false. If your soul can stretch herself at rest, and find the bed long enough, and the coverlet broad enough to cover her in the chambers of sin, then you are a hypocrite, and far enough from any right thoughts of Christ or perception of His preciousness. But if, on the other hand, you feel that if you could indulge in sin without punishment, yet it would be a punishment of itself; and that if you could have the whole world, and abide in it for ever, it would be quite enough misery not to be parted from it; for your God–your God–is what your soul craves after; then be of good courage, thou art a child of God. With all thy sins and imperfections, take this to thy comfort: if thy soul has no rest in sin, thou are not as the sinner is! If thou art still crying after and craving after something better, Christ has not forgotten thee, for thou hast not quite forgotten Him. The believer cannot do without his Lord; words are inadequate to express his thoughts of Him. We cannot live on the sands of the wilderness, we want the manna which drops from on high; our skin bottles of creature confidence cannot yield us a drop of moisture, but we drink of the rock which follows us, and that rock is Christ. When you feed on Him your soul can sing, “He hath satisfied my mouth with good things, so that my youth is renewed like the eagle’s,” but if you have Him not, your bursting wine vat and well-filled barn can give you no sort of satisfaction: rather lament over them in the words of wisdom, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”

I recognize that it still contain the old English that Spurgeon spoke but I hope you can still understand what he is trying to say. My hope today is to help us to see that the true believer in God, the one called of Jesus Christ, will recognize that we can’t live in sin as a habitual life style and be saved. Can you find rest in anything other than Jesus Christ? Can you find satisfaction in the world in any other person or thing than Jesus Christ? I have added the underlined part in the devotion to call attention to the fact that a believer’s soul craves after (desires, wants or seeks after) the Lord God and finds no pleasure or rest in sin!

We who believe want to be fed from God and drink from the Rock of Jesus Christ for the sustenance of our soul. Only Christ satisfies our life. If you have Him not, Spurgeon says, all the world has can bring you no satisfaction and all is “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” I believe that this means that life is empty without living for and in Christ. King Solomon wrote the thoughts on vanity and he concluded after having everything any man could want, and I mean everything his human heart desired, he found that without life was empty and had no purpose. He concluded his book, Ecclesiastes, like this: from chapter 12:13-14,

13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.

Yes all we do will be judged by God in the end whether we believe in Him or not He will judge each of us because He is God! Believer we too are judged by our works as well but at the judgment seat of Christ for how we have lived in accordance to the Book, our obedience to God or disobedience to His written Word.

Those today that may be reading this it is my prayer that you will take time to think seriously about accepting Christ as your personal Savior and Lord and having a relationship with God through his Son, Jesus. Write me and let me show you how to have eternal life with the Lord God Almighty. Blessing for all.